The Tilt-Up Concrete Association is pleased to announce that the Tilt-Up Convention & Expo Pavilion—a full-scale experimental prototype developed through Tilt Lab for the 2024 TCA Convention & Expo in Phoenix—has been selected by the jury of the 2025 AIA Arizona Design Awards as an award winner in the Component Category.
The pavilion represents a significant advancement in tilt-up concrete research, demonstrating how the method’s traditionally planar geometries can be expanded through the introduction of a third dimension formed in compacted earth. This experimental approach—coined Opus Luteum—uses local soil as a flexible, reusable forming surface capable of producing double-curvature panels that enhance both structural performance and architectural expression.
Challenging the Limits of Conventional Tilt-Up
Tilt-up concrete is widely recognized for its speed, durability, and cost-efficiency, but the method has been historically limited to planar wall construction. The pavilion challenges this assumption by exploring how earth as formwork—one of the oldest and most fundamental building materials—can be leveraged as an environmentally sensitive mold-making system.
By allowing the creation of custom curvatures without the need for complex or waste-intensive formwork, Opus Luteum extends the design potential of tilt-up beyond traditional envelopes. The resulting double-curved surfaces increase stiffness, improve load distribution, and open new avenues for expressive, high-performance concrete assemblies.
Project Goals and Collaborative Design Process
Commissioned by Tilt Lab, the philanthropic arm of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association, the pavilion was conceived as a way to demonstrate the versatility of tilt-up concrete as a high-performance building envelope and to foreground the method’s compatibility with advanced architectural geometry.
The client’s brief emphasized:
- using tilt-up’s inherent efficiencies as a platform for design innovation
- introducing curvature to expand formal and performative possibilities
- prioritizing sustainability by employing locally sourced, reusable earth
- advancing interdisciplinary collaboration, a central tenet of Tilt Lab’s mission
The resulting prototype could only be realized through a tightly integrated approach that united architects, engineers, contractors, and fabrication specialists in a shared development process.
A Significant Recognition for Tilt Lab and the Tilt-Up Industry
The AIA Arizona Design Award places the pavilion—and the broader Opus Luteum initiative—within a statewide architectural conversation, affirming the project’s contribution to material innovation, design methodology, and construction culture.
This recognition joins other key milestones in the project’s evolution, including:
- publication of the research in The Plan Journal, an international peer-reviewed architecture journal
- the Viddy Award for Shaping Earth Mock-Up, the short documentary film documenting early-stage material and forming investigations
Together, these accomplishments reflect the growing visibility of experimental tilt-up research and underscore Tilt Lab’s commitment to advancing the method’s architectural potential.
A full feature on the Opus Luteum research publication will follow.
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